The present invention relates to a respiration leading system for inducing relaxation effectively by using a sense-stimulating unit.
Many kinds of stress are prevailing in our society today, and people are under the continuous psychological and physiological stresses. A respiration of a person who is under psychologically over-stressed becomes shallow and rapid unconsciously. Such a respiration also causes physiological strain like a rapid heartbeat or a rise of blood pressure through the autonomic nervous system.
Conventionally, there have been such an apparatus or a method available that lead a person (user or living body) to respire by repeated on-and-off illumination of light or by changing the intensity of light and color tone so that he (or she) can escape from the stress (see Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. HEI03-222964 and No. 2000-357591).
A setting of a respiration period must be most carefully done in the respiration leading for the relaxation. If the period is too short, the above-mentioned stress is caused, and if too long, the respiration is not continued and also an excessive load arises and significantly affects the circulatory system. To avoid those problems, a method or system was developed which elongates the respiration period from the short period at the respiration leading start to the longer period with which respiration is done without any difficulty, by using a feedback from the respiratory movement through some sort of method. However, such a system is too complex and expensive.
If a range of respiration period which is effective for relaxation is made clear, the feedback is not necessary for the system and it is possible to realize a simple and low cost respiration leading system.
A time balance between inhaling and exhaling is a important parameter of respiration for relaxation as well as the period of the respiration.
During the exhaling cycle the parasympathetic nervous system of the autonomic nervous system is activated to release a body from tension, and conversely during the inhaling cycle the sympathetic nervous system is activated to make the body keep tension.
Therefore, it is important to set the exhaling time longer than the inhaling time so that the relaxation will be induced by respiration control. The ratio of the exhaling time to inhaling time (hereafter called as exhaling-ratio) in the spontaneous respiration is known to vary with the respiration period, for example during sleeping the respiration period becomes longer and the exhaling-ratio becomes larger.
It must be avoided to temporarily stop respiration during the respiration leading for the relaxation. Such a respiration-stopped state causes an excessive load for the circulatory system.
If respiration leading is done with an unnatural respiration pattern such as largely different from spontaneous respiration, a person under the leading will stop the respiration because of uneasiness to match the respiration to the pattern. Therefore, it is effective for relaxation to use natural respiration pattern in which the exhaling-ratio is changed according to the change of the respiration period in the process to elongate the respiration period. Here, the relaxation means a relaxed state including a sleeping state as the result of deep relaxation.